Beyond Words
by Rosethorn
Summary: In my children, I have lost my mind but found my soul." -Lisa T. Shephard. Written for HarryMurphy, 100moods, prompt 1, Accomplished.


I may have the most single-minded daughter in the world. This was the sixth time in less than an hour that I was rescuing her from an imminent tumble down the stairs. I have no idea how she managed to get the trapdoor open, but every time I took my eyes off her and started concentrating on something approaching work, the hinges would creak and she'd be poised for a fall again.

"Stubborn, that's what you are," I told Maggie, hoisting her onto my left hip as she squirmed in my arms. I kicked the trapdoor shut and continued, "Just plain bloody-minded stubborn."

"Not," Maggie said, and grabbed for my pentacle.

I took it off one-handed before she strangled me and gave it to her. "You are so. You and me both, and Mommy makes three." Silently I thanked God for shiny objects. They might not work on Murph anymore, but Maggie was still young enough to be easily distracted.

"_Four,"_ she said, loudly, dropping my pentacle. Maybe not so easily distracted after all. "Four! Sister!"

"Of course, Magpie, how could I forget?" I made sure there was nothing sharp on my desk before I put Maggie down on it—like me, she has an alarming tendency to injure herself. For a wonder, she stayed in place just long enough for me to bend down and grab my necklace, watching me with wide blue eyes, making sure I was looking at her before she tried to crawl off the desk and crack her head open. Ah, toddlers.

I used to think that if I could keep track of Toot, I could keep track of anything. Obviously I didn't have a two-year-old then.

Safely set on the ground, Maggie didn't immediately head for the trapdoor; instead she hung around my legs and tried to trip me. "Sister soon?" she asked.

"Yes, Magpie," I said, absently, trying to find the paperwork for my latest client. "Soon. It could be a brother, though."

"No," Maggie said, and stuck her lower lip out. "Sister. Soon."

Remember what I said about her being single-minded? Ever since we told Maggie she was getting a younger sibling, she's been convinced the little beach ball is a girl. I'm not so sure myself, though honestly, I am kind of hoping for a girl. I'm not looking forward to fighting over whether we name a boy Malcolm Collin or Collin Malcolm.

And if you think it wouldn't come up, you don't know Murphy.

"_Daddy,"_ Maggie whispered. "Daddy, daddy!" Clever girl, knowing just when I take my attention away from where it rightfully belongs, which is to say on her little self. "Daddy, sister prez?"

By which she meant would the baby come on her birthday, and oh, God, I hoped not. "I don't think so, Magpie."

"Why not?" She stuck her lip out again.

"Because then you and your sister or bro—" Maggie has already learned to glare. I stopped, then said, "you and your sister would have the same birthday, and that's no fun."

"Is," she said, with conviction. "Then three and baby. Good." Then she was off again, toddling towards her stuffed animal pile. I was grateful I'd gotten that much attention. Two-year-olds also have the attention span of a goldfish.

"And to think," I muttered to myself, hunting through the remainder of my paperwork, "that I volunteered to go through the terrible twos again."

The phone rang, and I grabbed for it with what may have looked like unseemly haste. However, part of the reason I had Maggie at my office in the first place was because her mother was about eleven months pregnant, and in the hospital on bed rest. After what happened with Maggie, the obstrician was taking no chances. I hear the carpet's still stained by the file cabinets at the station.

Having a stubborn wife who loves her job can occasionally get interesting.

Actually, being married to Murph in the first place frequently gets interesting. Occasionally painful as well, but if I minded the odd bruise I'd never have become a wizard, much less a father.

I reminded myself that this _was_ still my office, and answered the phone professionally. "Harry Dresden."

"Hi, it's me." Murph sounded tired, and annoyed. She _hated_ hospitals, and I didn't blame her, particularly since I didn't dare visit her too often, and then only when I'd exhausted myself and my magic making sure Maggie lived through the day. Much as I love my wife, I hate the idea of shorting out someone's life support more. "Are you busy?"

I shook my head, and remembered she wasn't actually there. "No, not really. Just making sure Maggie doesn't fall down the stairs and break her neck. Why?"

Murph put on her best godawful Brooklyn accent. "I'm bustin' outta heah. When can you get here?"

"Oh, Murph, think of what Dr. DuPre will do to me..."

"You want to risk it being worse than what I'll do to you if you leave me here?" she asked, sweetly.

Right. Picking her up it was. "Fifteen minutes," I said. "If you go into labor in the Beetle I am not responsible."

She laughed. "No, that'll be my fault and the baby's bad timing. Hurry, please."

"I will. I love you."

"Love you too."

We both hung up. I collected Maggie and a small mountain of toys and strapped them both into the car, Maggie in her booster seat in the back. I have to say, I feel a lot more comfortable driving Maggie in the Beetle than I would in any other car. It's been put back together so many times I figure it's got to be some kind of immortal by now.

True, it's not really built for deflecting bullets. But the criminal underworld has already gotten the message (short, bloody, and pointed) about what happens when someone tries to get me by gunning for my family. No one would attack me when I had my daughter in the car.

I like dealing with the smarter criminal elements. I may be fair game, if I piss someone off enough. My daughter isn't.

I arrived at the hospital about a quarter of an hour later, parked, and tore Maggie away from the toy triceratops. I let her take the T. rex with her, though. I owe Sue that much.

Anyway, Maggie insisted on being carried on my shoulders, and I walked into the lobby with a plastic T. rex stalking invisible prey through my hair. Fortunately, the good nuns at St. Bernard's Maternity and Pediatrics Ward are used to children, and even more used to me veering away from anything that looks remotely medical. The nun at the desk didn't even blink when I finally made my zig-zagging way up to her.

"Hi," I said. "I'm here to pick up..."

"No one, Mr. Dresden," she said, calmly. Hey, name recognition. "You're going to sit down and wait over there while I page the doctor."

Oops. Sounded like Murph got caught. "Uh, if this is about the escape attempt..."

"It's not. Please just have a seat."

That didn't sound good.

Maggie slithered down off my shoulders and into my lap after I sat. She was apparently (and opportunely) in one of her rare cuddling moods, because she made no move to either slip away or fidget with her dinosaur. Instead, she laid her head on my chest, stuck her thumb in her mouth and grabbed my shirt with her other hand.

Both my girls know when I'm worrying, and they deal with it in their own ways. I cuddled Maggie, and waited.

A doctor I didn't recognize came out at long last, and bellowed, "Mr. Dresden?" into the muted chaos of the lobby.

I held Maggie against my chest and stood up. "Right here," I said.

I'm not sure he heard me, but since I was the only male standing he came over to me anyway. "Mr. Dresden," he repeated, and stared at the chart he carried.

"Yes, that's me," I said, after a pause made it clear he didn't intend to say anything else.

He nodded. "Your wife just went into labor," he said. "The baby is presenting as a breech, so we've decided to perform a C-section. Now, this is a very low-risk surgery and frankly, we don't expect anything to go wrong, especially given that this is not your wife's first child." He eyed Maggie, then finally looked me in the face. I ducked away from his eyes immediately. "You're allowed in the operating room, but the child is not."

"That's okay," I said, hastily. "I'd prefer to wait out here. Uh... do you know about how long it'll be?"

He shrugged. "We're putting her in prepatory now, so...about an hour? The surgery generally takes between thirty-five and forty-five minutes."

Wow, that was fast. Maggie'd been nearly all night in coming out, and that was _after_ we got to the hospital. "Oh... okay."

"Congratulations on your impending fatherhood," the doctor said, and smiled thinly. "I have to get back to my duties. Someone will come to get you when your wife is in recovery." He hurried away without even bothering to shake my hand.

Not, I guess, that he could have, as both my hands were occupied in holding Maggie. She was quiet, suspiciously so, but then I don't think she understood anything of what we were saying except maybe "baby."

"Hey, Maggie," I said, craning my neck to look down at her. She was gazing thoughtfully at the doctor's retreating back, and didn't bother to look at me. "Magpie, Daddy has to make some calls. You want to go and play with the other kids?"

Maggie shook her head firmly. "No. Stay."

"_Boring_ calls," I warned her.

"_Stay,"_ she insisted. All righty, then. I carried her over to the payphone in its secluded little nook and prayed I had enough change to carry me through all the subsequent calls.

Mama Murphy, as I still referred to her in the privacy of my own head, was first on the list, naturally. I listened to the phone ring, shivery through the static, and kept an eye on Maggie, now seated in a plastic chair playing some mysterious game with her dinosaur. It involved a lot of fake roaring and some evil laughter.

She let out an especially good (and loud) bout of cackling just as the phone got picked up. My mother-in-law's puzzled tone made it through the tricky connection. "Hello?"

"Hi, it's Harry," I said. "How're you doing?"

"Harry!" Her tone warmed noticably. "I'm fine, thank you. Why the call? Is Karrin in labor? Do you need me to babysit Maggie?"

"Yes, ma'am," I said. "Doctor said about an hour, so I thought I'd just keep Maggie with me, but if you want to head over here anyway it's not going to be very long."

She smiled—I heard it in her voice when she spoke next. Murph does the same thing, that same sunny little rounding to her voice that means I've made her smile. "I'll be over as soon as I can. You're still at St. Bernard's?"

"Yes," I said again. "Hey, I'm running out of change; can you call the uncles and aunt?"

"Of course. Say hello to Maggie for me." She hung up, and I fished for more quarters.

Thomas was next, and my connection with his cell phone was even worse than the previous one, so we kept the conversation to a few terse words—"What?" "Baby." "Coming." Molly would be volunteering, and I knew Michael was working, but I called and left a message with Charity anyway. I checked off numbers in my head and came to the final one, the one I always saved for last because it was so much fun.

This connection, ironically enough, was crystal clear. "Yeah, what?"

I grinned. "Hey, sir. Been a while."

"Three months!" Ebenezar snapped, mock-angry. "Something horrible got to happen before you call me, hoss?"

I leaned against the wall. "No, not really. Nothing horrible's happened this time around."

"So'd you just call to shoot the breeze?" The sarcasm dripped heavy in his voice.

"Oh, please, it's me." I paused momentarily to remove a Lego from Maggie's mouth and said, "Congratulations, you're a grandmentor."

He snorted. "Come again?"

"Sprog number two is in the process of being born. Maggie, _no_, that's not for eating. If you want to come on up we'd love to see you."

"Congratulations!" I got the feeling he wasn't genuinely surprised. He had seen Murph the last time he was up, after all, and Murph six months pregnant is about as obvious as Murph nine months pregnant. The three months just add more air to the balloon, if you get my meaning. "I'm in the middle of something right now, but I'll be up in the next week or so. Girl or boy?"

"We don't know yet. Maggie's sure it's a girl."

He chuckled. "Well, you know kids. I—" A beeping noise started in the background. "—shit! I got to go, hoss, the potion's scorching. See you in a week." The phone clicked.

I'd managed to waste...let's see...almost fifteen minutes calling around. Forty-five minutes left to go, then. I sat down on one of those hard plastic chairs you see everywhere in hospitals, kept an eye on Maggie, and wished I'd thought to bring a paperback book, just in case.

It may have been shown earlier that I hate waiting. I really do. This wasn't necessarily a life-threatening situation, but...well. I'd narrowly missed getting clocked by a bedpan while Maggie was being born, and I did get my wrist broken. Did you know they don't take expectant mothers to the operating room where the baby's actually born until they're so many inches dilated? That gives wizard fathers like myself plenty of time to be nearly murdered by our loving wives.

In all fairness, though, I deserved the bedpan.

Anyway, the next hour consisted of pacing, muttering, twiddling my thumbs and rescuing older children from my little hellion. I'll spare you the boring details. Suffice to say that by the time my mother-in-law showed up (the first of many visitors), I was dozing, stretched on my back across several fluorescent plastic chairs, with Maggie perched on my stomach glaring balefully at a four-year-old boy across the room. Don't ask.

I only noticed her when Maggie perked up and yelped, "Grammy, grammy!" She bounced up and down, driving all the air out of my stomach, and waved her arms in the air.

Marion Murphy noticed my distress and thoughtfully prevented its source from hopping up and down on my lungs by removing her. "Hi, sweetie!" she said, cheerfully, and gave Maggie a smacking kiss on the cheek. "How have you been?"

"Happy!" Maggie declared. "Sister!"

"That's right, sweetie." She glanced down at me. "And you?"

I managed to breathe again. "All right. Winded and busy, but all right."

"Three-year-olds are fun that way." She bounced Maggie on her hip a little.

"Two," Maggie said. "Three _soon."_ A stickler for accuracy, my girl.

"Have you heard anything?" Mrs. Murphy asked, ignoring Maggie.

I shook my head, and opened my mouth, and spotted Murph's obstrician Dr. Harrison heading purposefully in my direction, approximately in that order. "No, but I think I'm about to."

"Mr. Dresden," he said, right on cue. "Congratulations, you have a healthy daughter."

Maggie crowed with laughter, and added gleefully, "See? _Sister!_ Told you."

Dr. Harrison glanced at Maggie, and the crow's-feet around his eyes crinkled. "I wish you luck," he told me, "if this one is as opinioned as her sister."

"Thank you," I said, maybe a touch too enthusiastically. "I'm going to need it."

Mrs. Murphy coughed a laugh.

"Well, anyway, I can let you into the recovery room, but your visitors are going to have to wait until we move them back to the permanent room." He smiled at Maggie again. "I'm afraid that means you, too, sweetie." Maggie flipped a dismissive hand at him and nestled her head on her grandmother's shoulder.

I glanced back at Mrs. Murphy, and she echoed Maggie's gesture. "Go. I'll look after her."

Don't have to tell me twice.

Murph was propped up in the hospital bed, her arms wrapped possessively around the teensiest bundle I ever saw. Even Maggie was bigger than that. She looked up when I came in, and wrinkled her nose at me. "So much for breaking out."

I laughed, and kissed her. "You're not kidding. Let me see!"

"You've been spending too much time with Maggie," she informed me, but I was already paying attention to the baby.

Every father tends to say his child is the prettiest in the world, and most of them don't have any basis for it, because, let's face it, newborn children aren't pretty. They're red, wrinkly, covered in something that resembles cottage cheese, and generally all-around ugly. Babies can be cute, but a bunch of them resemble something like a bulldog's back end as well.

Maggie was a pretty baby, with hair and eyelashes and everything. This little girl wasn't really. She'd stopped screaming sometime during her fifteen minutes or so of life, and now just stared in blank amazement at the world around her. Or at least I thought she stared—I think I read somewhere that newborn babies can't focus their eyes yet. She was scrubbed all clean and pink, and she was totally and completely bald.

Of course, I lost my heart the second I saw her.

Murph stroked the baby's forehead, then nudged me in the ribs. "Hey, wake up. We still have to name her."

I blinked. "Oh. Right. Yeah. What?"

"How did I know you were going to do this?" She shoved gently at my shoulder. "Look, there's a chair over there. Sit at least. You're giving me backache."

Oh, right, I was still hunched over. Chair it was. I dragged it over and sat down. "Didn't we talk about this before?"

"Yes, but we never actually agreed on anything." Murphy lay back and settled the baby against her stomach.

I tried to remember the names we'd brought up. This was hard to do. Some would tell you it's difficult for me to think about more than one thing at a time. This is especially true when one of them is a newborn daughter.

"I think someone suggested Katherine," I said at last.

Murph looked somewhat wryly at me. "You did. And I shot it down. Every other girl her age is going to be named that."

"Hey, cut me some slack here. I'm concentrating on three very beautiful things at once. Coming up with names is difficult!"

"Three?" Murphy arched her eyebrow at me.

"You, the baby, and, uh..." I gestured to where said baby had her mouth firmly wrapped around Murphy's breast.

She glanced down. "Oh. Harry, you pervert."

There was no real heat in her voice, but I responded anyway. "Madly in love. And lust. And I haven't gotten to do anything but hold you in three months. As you know very well."

"And whose fault is that? I think we should name her Julia."

I ignored this assault on my virtue and rolled the name around in my mind instead. Julia. Yeah. I put up a token fight though, because Murph would get suspicious if I gave in too easily. "Why? Sounds kind of Roman to me."

"That's because it is." She juggled the baby's weight a bit, settling her a little more carefully. "I like it."

"Julia it is, then," I said, and leaned over to kiss her again. This time lasted a little longer. If the baby hadn't started fussing it might have lasted a lot longer than it did.

As it was, Murphy gently elbowed me away and repositioned herself so the baby—Julia now—could nurse again. "You've already got a bad sense of timing," she told her. "Just like your daddy."

"Hey now," I said, mildly. "My sense of timing has been finely honed and cultivated over the years. She won't have one as bad as mine until she's my age."

My wife grinned at me. "I shall endeavor to form good habits. Where's Maggie?"

"Outside, with your mother. Doctor says they're not allowed in until you move back to your other room." I touched my daughter's tiny cheek with a forefinger, and added, "Sorry, you've got to stay at least one more night."  
She rolled her eyes. "Yes, I remember. Goddamnit, I hate hospitals."

"Language."

She also gave me a look. "She's less than an hour old, Harry. I don't think she even comprehends language yet, let alone swear words."

A nurse bustled in about then and fluttered around Murphy, checking her pulse and blood pressure and other medical tidbits, enough so I had to move back against the wall to give her room to work. Murphy rolled her eyes at me and shifted Julia from arm to arm as required, but refused to let go of her. I didn't object; Julia was still nursing, and if she was anything like her sister she'd raise merry hell if she got interrupted before she was good and done. Besides, at least the nurse didn't chase me out. I'd had to deal with a bit of that when Maggie was born.

The nurse left, and we were alone, the three of us. Julia finished nursing, and stared at the ceiling fan with vaguely unfocused eyes. Murphy cooed something at her, and added, "Here, hold her for a bit. My arms are getting tired and I'd like to put my breasts away."

"Oh, do you have to?"

I swear, it came out of my mouth without any input from my brain.

Murphy calmly freed a hand from the baby and smacked me upside the head. I gave her a sheepish grin; it must have worked, because she smiled at me, then transferred our daughter into my arms. Julia blinked for a bit, then stared at me with the same mad amazement she'd given to the ceiling fan. Nice to be loved.

But she really was beautiful.

"Hey, little girl," I whispered, rocking her a little side to side. "Welcome to the world."


End file.
